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[0:00] This is the First Mustang Pulpit Podcast. A podcast of the weekly preaching and teaching at First Mustang.! Thank you for joining us. This morning, we come to you admitting that we are often enamored with our own sin.

[0:21] We're in love with the things, as we just sang, that lead us to the grave. And we confess that to you, Lord. We can only return to a true love for you by your grace.

[0:33] And so, Lord, as we think and meditate on who you are and what you've done for us in Christ today, I pray that we would forsake the world and pursue you with our heart, soul, mind, and strength.

[0:49] We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen. It's a privilege to get to share with you this morning. Michael is out taking some time off and time away from the office this week, which we trust has been fruitful for him.

[1:03] But knowing him, he is itching to get back. But I'm honored to fill in in his place this morning. And even though he's already stepped out, I'm very thankful for Kashawn Barber.

[1:15] The youth staff, when they hired him, their gain was also a huge gain for the music ministry. He helps out in so many ways, leading, just like you saw today, seamlessly in my absence.

[1:29] He helps out in student choir and a whole other host of ways. And I'm so grateful that he is on staff with us and for his ministry this morning. It's been estimated that we make several thousand decisions every day.

[1:47] Whether we realize it or not, we make decisions all the time. When you woke up this morning, you made a choice. Am I going to get out of bed or am I going to stay in bed? Am I going to go to church or am I not going to go to church?

[1:59] If you're like my son, I walked in. He's supposed to leave with me at 7 o'clock. He was dead asleep. And so I said, we're leaving in five minutes. You have a choice to make. Are you going to get up? Are you going to come with me?

[2:09] Are you going to stay and come with mom? And he made it in about seven minutes. And so we have choices. Will you brush your teeth or will you not? Hopefully you will. When you're at the office, will you open your email first or will you start your first task?

[2:23] Your day is filled with decisions. And I think that we realize that some decisions obviously are more important than others. When I asked Aaliyah if she would marry me, she had a decision to make.

[2:36] That's a little bit more important than if we're going to brush our teeth. But some momentous decisions are recorded for us in Scripture. Scripture, I'm often reminded of Joshua's admonition.

[2:49] It said, choose you this day whom you will serve. But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord. Or if you think about the rich young ruler and Christ put it before him, will you forsake your faith in your treasures and in the things that you own and give up everything to pick up your cross and follow me?

[3:09] Or will you not? And he chose to walk away. It says that he walked away sad. He made a choice. And we find some other important choices in our text today.

[3:19] If you haven't already turned there, you can turn to Ephesians chapter 11. But one thing that we notice when reading the book of Hebrews is that this specific community of Hebrews was facing intensified persecution.

[3:37] You can actually read at the end of chapter 10, and it lists for you some of those hardships that the Hebrews were facing. And then the writer encourages the people of God to not throw away their confidence, which has a great reward.

[3:51] And he encourages them to endure. He encourages them to hold on. And he finishes that chapter by saying that we as the people of God are not those who shrink back and are destroyed, but those who have faith and preserve their souls.

[4:05] So we know that this word faith would become the theme of this next chapter. Hebrews chapter 11 is often dubbed the hall of faith. Right?

[4:15] It lists and gives us a list of the who's who among Israelites. We have Abel and Noah, Abraham and Sarah, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, and more, but not more famous perhaps than that of Moses.

[4:31] He was one of the most well-known and respected Israelites. We know from the Mount of Transfiguration, he was one of two other people that appeared there with Christ on the Mount of Transfiguration.

[4:42] He was an incredibly important figure in the history of Israel. And so to mention his name would fortify these weakened souls of these persecuted saints.

[4:56] It's like appealing to Washington or Jefferson or Lincoln. If you're discussing American politics. But Moses is not just an example for the Israelites. He's an example by extension now for us in the church age to us as believers.

[5:11] And so surrounding this story of Moses that we're mostly familiar with from the book of Exodus, there are several choices that Moses and his family made.

[5:23] And so Hebrews chapter 11, starting in verse 23, we'll list some of these for us. And so I'm going to read chapter 11, verse 23 through 28.

[5:37] It says, It says, So I want us to think through this passage with four major headings, and I'll walk you through them.

[6:34] And I will admit to you first that my second one is going to be the longest. Okay, so don't freak out. And I've also built in some natural exit ramps. And so I'm not used to necessarily pacing out a sermon.

[6:48] So just trust me, I will get you out on time. Okay, and we may just have to pick up next week. I'll just tell Michael, I'm sorry. I didn't get through everything. I'm going to preach again. I'm just kidding. It'll probably be a Facebook post you'll have to read.

[6:59] But I promise I will get you through the meat. And then if we have time to finish, we will. But hopefully this will be advantageous for you. So the first major heading I want us to consider when we look at the life of Moses and his faith is that faith makes obedience to God our number one priority.

[7:21] Faith makes obedience to God our number one priority. We see this in verse 23 discussing his parents. It says, By faith, Moses, when he was born, he was hidden for three months by his parents because they saw that the child was beautiful and they were not afraid of the king's edict.

[7:44] And so as we think back on our understanding of the biblical narrative of Moses' life, we were reminded in Exodus 1 that the king that Joseph had been serving in the same court as had passed away, as had Joseph.

[7:57] And there was a new king. There was a new pharaoh in place that the Bible says in Exodus 1 going into 2 that did not know Joseph, did not care about Joseph. He just looked out on the land and saw the Israelites and they were multiplying greatly.

[8:10] And he became afraid because he was afraid that they were either going to rise up and overtake them or that they were going to leave. And if they left, then there would be no more workforce, right?

[8:21] So this is a matter of national security and economic prosperity. But he found that the more that they oppressed them, the more they multiplied. And so he gave out this challenge or this charge to the Hebrew midwives and said any first or any son that is born to the Hebrew women, you need to kill them.

[8:44] All right? That's a pretty crazy command to give to your people. But we know from the testimony of Scripture there that the Hebrew midwives feared the Lord and they did not allow that to happen.

[8:58] They chose to spare the children. And so the Israelites continued to multiply even more. And so the Pharaoh then commanded all of his people to find any son that is born to the Hebrews and throw them into the river.

[9:14] All right? This is an act of genocide. This would be something that if you read about it on the news today, you would be horrified. Right? This was an attempt to exterminate a race.

[9:25] And it was into this political and cultural context that Moses' parents found themselves giving birth to a child, a son, no less.

[9:37] And so as a side note, I want to make note that the Lord didn't do it 30 years before when perhaps there would have been a more benevolent Pharaoh ruling or when the people of God had not yet overpopulated the Egyptian landscape, but it was in the midst of a genocide of baby boys that God said, I am going to bring a baby boy into the world for my purposes and for my glory.

[10:05] So I don't want us to ever look at what's going on in the world and think that God has lost control because he hasn't. And I don't want us to ever bemoan the day and age in which we are called to live.

[10:18] You hear this often when people, especially when they're talking about having children, like I don't know if we should bring children into this world. It's crazy. Well, the world's been crazy for a long, long time, right? And God continues to use his people for his glory and for his purposes.

[10:31] And as long as the Lord tarries, he still has a plan for the people of God, for his namesake, for his glory. So keep working. Keep having conversations in the marketplace.

[10:41] Keep sharing the gospel. Keep having children. Aaliyah and I are done. We're not doing that anymore, but it's up to Joey now. We had our four. But keep on keeping on until he says, that's enough and I'm coming back.

[10:56] Right? But Moses' parents had a decision to make. Were they going to yield to the pressures and threats of the world or would they risk their lives for the sake of obedience? And while some speculate that Moses' parents could have known that Moses was gonna be some great deliverer, we're not given that information necessarily in scripture.

[11:14] We can't truly know, but we can know a couple of things. This edict and this law that was issued by the king of Egypt at the time stood directly against the accomplishment of the Abrahamic covenant, right?

[11:29] Where God promised to bring about a Messiah and he would be a blessing to all people, right? Because it aimed at the eradication of the whole race.

[11:39] One generation more and the Israelite people would have gone extinct, right? Along with it, the hopes for their redeemer. So in the least, Moses' parents should have known that.

[11:51] They should have known and they would have known that God had a plan for the people of Israel and that this plan from the king of Egypt stood in direct confrontation to that. So they were not gonna yield to that.

[12:02] We can also know and affirm that it took faith to put Moses in the basket. It took faith to trust that Pharaoh's daughter would bring her into his household. It took faith to send him, at probably age three, into a pagan household to be raised up and trained up when they feared the Lord and they knew that he wouldn't be raised in a home that feared the Lord.

[12:23] It took faith to think that they would ever even see them or see him again. We must also affirm by the text in Hebrews that had the natural love and affection for a parent that a parent has for a child.

[12:37] If that had been the only reason for their decision to hide Moses, which is a natural human tendency, right? If you knew that your child would have the possibility to be taken and thrown into a river and you, as a natural affection for your child, you would wanna preserve that.

[12:52] But what Scripture says, it's not that emotion. It wasn't that feeling that caused them to hold back and save their son. It says that he was done, it was done by faith.

[13:04] Otherwise, it would have read, it was done by affection or it was done by love, but it was done by faith. They were clearly willing to obey God rather than men.

[13:16] They had faith that obeying God was worth the risk that obedience brought into their lives. So faith makes obedience to God our number one priority because faith believes that God's way is better than man's.

[13:33] Faith believes that God's way is better than man's. So as we go through each of these points, I'm just gonna give you a couple of questions that you can feel free to think about or write down and come back to later.

[13:45] But under this first heading, where have you stopped being obedient to God? Where has your obedience stopped?

[13:56] In what ways are you not obeying the Lord? Next question, in what ways have you thought that your ways are better than God's?

[14:07] Perhaps you know that there's something that says in Scripture, but you're like, surely that doesn't apply to me today. Or that, I know what that says, but you know what, I'll just repent of that later because that would make my life so complicated.

[14:20] In what ways have you thought that your ways are better than God's? Then lastly, in what ways have you succumbed to the cultural pressures around you and said, I'm not going to fight this anymore?

[14:36] In what ways have you looked at what the world is doing around you and said, I don't have the energy to stand up for that. I don't have the energy to fight that. It is what it is.

[14:46] It's the world we live in. I'm just gonna, it is what it is. Right? In what ways have you succumbed to the cultural pressures around you and said, I'm not gonna fight this anymore?

[14:58] So not only does faith make obedience to God our number one priority, number two, faith makes pursuing God our number one pleasure.

[15:10] Faith makes pursuing God our number one pleasure. We see this in verses 24 through 26 that says, By faith when Moses, when he was grown up, he refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin.

[15:33] He considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward. Acts 7 tells us that Moses was 40 years old when he went out and saw one of his Israelite brothers being attacked and he helped defend him and ultimately struck down the Egyptian and killed him.

[16:02] And in fear, he fled to Midian. He had a decision to make. It was at this moment that Moses had a choice to make. Would he identify as an Egyptian for the rest of his life?

[16:13] Or would he identify and choose the people of God? Clearly, he had stood up for the Israelites and had identified with him in that way. But as being a son of Pharaoh's daughter, surely he could have gotten away with that.

[16:26] I mean, he was an Egyptian. He could have lived that life. But he chose to identify with the Israelites. He chose to identify with the Hebrew people. And he chose the people of God knowing what he would have to leave behind.

[16:42] Acts 7 verse 22 says that Moses was educated in all the learning of the Egyptians and he was a man of power in words and deeds.

[16:53] You have to understand Moses lived in the wealthiest court of one of the most powerful kingdoms the world had ever known up until this point. What he had at his disposal had to be more than any of us could truly imagine.

[17:07] We see the discoveries of things like King Tut's tomb that has shown how vastly rich Egypt was at its peak. And it wasn't like Moses was necessarily treated as an outsider.

[17:19] That was kind of my, that was kind of the preconceived notion that I had brought into this narrative on my own was that because he was an outsider, he was brought in. He must have been treated like an outsider. But I have to imagine when he was brought in as Pharaoh's daughter, she treated him as her own.

[17:35] He was given everything that the royal family would have been given. He had 40 years of memories with this mother that raised him. He had 40 years of experience with other siblings running around that he grew up and played with.

[17:51] Right? Everything that he wanted was at his disposal in a worldly sense at least. He had the right family. He had money. He had the highest education.

[18:01] He had political power. He was set for life. And so what Moses knew was that to forsake his Egyptian family, to walk away, he would not get that back. He would not be restored.

[18:14] And so it wasn't just a flippant decision for him. If you can imagine growing up in the home that you grew up in and then deciding that you needed to forsake the mother that raised you, to forsake the father that raised you, the family that you knew, the lifestyle that you knew, to honestly take on something that would bring about a lot of suffering for you.

[18:40] In fact, the word considered in verse 26 involves careful thought. But after careful thought, he forsook his family.

[18:51] He forsook the fleeting pleasures of sin and the treasures of Egypt. Obedience to God had become his number one pleasure over and above the pleasures of Egypt, over and above everything that was granted to him.

[19:08] The attitude of his heart had become the theme of Psalm 84 verse 10. You know this verse. This was written after the life of Moses, but it could easily have been his. It says, For a day in your courts is better than a thousand elsewhere.

[19:23] I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of wickedness. So with the forsaking of these things, he knew he would be mistreated with the people of God and it was worth it.

[19:36] With the forsaking of the world, he would be taking on the reproach of Christ and it was worth it. And why? It says that he was looking to his reward. I'm reminded of what we read earlier in our scripture reading.

[19:51] 1 John 2.15 and 2.17. It says, Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him and the world is passing away with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.

[20:08] So you have the reward of eternal life. He was looking to his reward. But even more for us, Matthew 10.37-39 reminds us that the reward is Christ himself.

[20:22] Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, Christ said. And whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And whoever does not take his cross up and follow me is not worthy of me.

[20:36] Whoever finds his life will lose it. And whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. The reward of Christ himself is worth it for us this morning to forsake the world, forsake the fleeting pleasures of sin.

[20:52] I think of song lyrics like worldly pleasures all forsaken. Take me Jesus, take me now. Or let goods and kindred go. Think about that for Moses, kindred being family members.

[21:06] Let goods and let kindred go. This mortal life also. The body they may kill, but this truth abides still. His kingdom is forever.

[21:19] I think oftentimes when we are hesitant to forsake the fleeting pleasures of sin is because we have too cheap a view of the riches of Christ. We don't have a high enough view of its value.

[21:33] We don't respect it enough. We have four boys. My youngest is five. If you ask him where he would like to go for a special night out to eat, he would say McDonald's.

[21:45] He loves the chicken nuggets. Now I'm reminded as a parent, if you just get a box of chicken nuggets, it's $3. They're still making a profit. That's not the highest quality food. Right?

[21:57] If you ask Aaliyah and I where we would like to go, we would list a number of steak houses for you. And there is a difference because he has not created a palate for the finer things.

[22:09] He has not tasted and savored a perfectly cooked steak. Right? He doesn't appreciate that. And for us, that is often the danger.

[22:22] We get satisfied with McDonald's when Christ offers us steak. steak, we get satisfied with something cheap because we don't have a value.

[22:33] He has no concept for a steak from mahogany. He has no concept for what that tastes like. He has no concept for how it nourishes his body so much more richly than chicken nuggets.

[22:46] I remember one time at Christmas and we had spent a lot of money as most parents do on gifts and it was pointless because one of our children just pulled the trash can over and started pulling out all the paper and just rolling around in the paper.

[22:58] And I'm looking over here at everything that had been bought at a great price and he's rolling in the trash. But we as believers and unbelievers are all too satisfied to roll in the trash when what has been given to us in Christ is right here.

[23:21] Romans 8 verse 18, for I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.

[23:35] Everything that we experience in the here and now is not worth comparing to the glory that is to be revealed to us. Philippians 1 verse 21, for me to live is Christ and to die is gain.

[23:49] There is a reward that we must look to. And I'm well aware that obedience is not always easy, right? If it were easy, we wouldn't need regular reminders.

[24:01] We wouldn't be called to admonish one another and to teach one another and to call one another back from sin. It's difficult. This was very brought to the forefront of my mind just a few weeks ago.

[24:15] I had a friend that I had the opportunity to have dinner with that lives in Atlanta. Known this guy for 20 years, was a college roommate, used to claim the name of Christ, now has forsaken that, says he's an agnostic, is living an alternative lifestyle and still love him dearly.

[24:35] We had dinner together. I was sitting across from him and I said, man, where are you at these days? What's going on? We talked for a long while. And he said something interesting to me.

[24:47] He said, John, he said, even if I wanted to leave this lifestyle, he said, I just don't know that I could. Love it too much. It was heartbreaking because that's true of all of us outside of Christ, right?

[25:00] We are in love with the life that we have chosen for ourselves that is not the life of pursuing Christ. And I tried to help him see that all of us are called to forsake something.

[25:15] He looked at me as if I had to not forsake anything to follow Christ and that he was being called to forsake his whole lifestyle. I said, we're all called to forsake the world. We're all called to forsake the fleeting pleasures of sin for the sake of obedience and pursuing the Lord.

[25:34] So faith makes pursuing God our number one pleasure because it trusts that walking with the Lord is for our highest good and for his greatest glory.

[25:47] Walking with the Lord is for our highest good and his greatest glory. So some questions for you to consider. In what ways are we hesitant to identify with the people of God?

[26:02] If you remember Moses, he made a choice to make. Was he going to identify with the Egyptians or was he going to identify with the Israelites? And he ultimately forsook everything that he knew to take on the reproach of Christ and to be mistreated with the people of God as it says.

[26:18] So in what ways are we hesitant to identify with the people of God? Perhaps it's staying silent on an issue that would set you at odds with your coworkers. It's possibly not speaking up for a biblical worldview at school.

[26:33] it's possibly choosing peace over and above lovingly and gracefully calling a family member out of their sin.

[26:46] Sometimes, if you notice, with family, it's the most difficult. You don't want to disturb the peace. And sometimes we usually end up just not saying anything at all, which is damning to their souls all for the sake of making us feel better about keeping the peace in the home.

[27:05] So in what ways are we hesitant to identify with the people of God? The second question, what worldly pleasures are we having trouble forsaking? What worldly pleasures are you having trouble walking away from?

[27:21] Are there things in your life that you would still hold on to and say, that's mine? Are there things in your life that you still hold on and say, you know what, I actually love that. That's going to be really hard for me to give up. And then lastly, it's not a question, but it's a charge to seek to regularly remind yourself of the riches of Christ and how glorious our reward is in Him.

[27:47] Seek to regularly remind yourself of how great Christ is. Seek to regularly remind yourself of the reward that awaits if we just hold on. faith makes pursuing God our number one pleasure.

[28:05] Number three, faith makes biblical courage a possibility. Faith makes biblical courage a possibility.

[28:17] We see this in verse 27. It says, by faith, he left Egypt not being afraid of the anger of the king, for he endured as seeing him who is invisible.

[28:32] So as a reminder, when he was 40, he fled, went down to Midian. God called him back to Egypt. And when he was around the age of 80, it says in Scripture that he was when the exodus happened.

[28:46] And so over the course of those 40 years, we see him go from someone who was fearful running from Pharaoh to a man who would stand up against the most powerful nation in the known world at the time.

[29:04] Fear is a powerful human emotion, right? It's one that Satan's, is one of most, Satan's most effective and most often used weapons.

[29:14] Abraham was fearful when he lied about his wife, Sarah, by saying that she was his sister. The disciples were fearful at the time of Christ's crucifixion. They all went into hiding. Only one was at the foot of the cross.

[29:26] They were all hiding when he appeared to them in the upper room, including the most courageous and outspoken one, that being Peter. Right? Just because they are followers of the Lord does not mean that they are exempt from the human emotion of fear.

[29:40] We are prone to fear. We're often fearful when we have to share the gospel. Newsflash, as a pastor, I still get afraid to share the gospel. I do. I don't want to look dumb.

[29:51] I don't want to say something wrong that would turn them away. I don't want to be embarrassed. We're fearful to take a biblical stance that may be unpopular.

[30:02] We're fearful when obeying God over men may cost us our job. We're fearful when we get an unexpected medical diagnosis. We're fearful when tensions rise on the international scene as we're seeing play out this week.

[30:16] week. The list could go on. So Moses had a choice. Would he follow the Lord's commands to confront the most powerful man in the world or would he crater and collapse?

[30:29] Would he trust the word of the Lord or choose to remain in captivity and hope to spare his life by submitting to a life of slavery? faith prevents us from folding under the world's pressure.

[30:46] Fear did not work on Moses at least not when God called him out of Egypt. Exodus chapter 14 verse 13 and 14 tells us of this and Moses said to the people fear not stand firm and see the salvation of the Lord which he will work for you today for the Egyptians whom you see today you shall never see again.

[31:05] The Lord will fight for you and you have only to be silent. Moses was calling his people to fear not. Faith is truly a grace of the Lord that inoculates us from fear.

[31:20] It enables us to place our hope in an unseen God. I love the verse Psalm 27 verse 1 most of you will recognize it says the Lord is my light and my salvation whom shall I fear?

[31:42] The Lord is the stronghold of my life of whom shall I be afraid? So how then do we stand firm? The scripture tells us in this passage that he endured as seeing him who is invisible.

[31:59] So we stand firm by placing Christ in front of us at all times. John Knox who was a persecuted reformer in Scotland said one does not fear the queen of Scotland when he has been on his knees before the king of kings.

[32:12] ! An accurate view of God will put all of our circumstances and all of the things that we are afraid of in proper perspective.

[32:25] It doesn't mean that our life will be easy. It doesn't mean that we will not face persecution. It doesn't mean that Christians are exempt from disease. It doesn't mean that Christians are exempt from losing their jobs.

[32:36] It doesn't mean that Christians are exempt from war. It doesn't mean any of these things but what it does mean is that you as a believer are serving a God who is in absolute control over and above all of those things and who has promised to you that he has a plan in and through those things for all people who are called according to his purposes and that there is nothing that will separate you from the love of Christ Jesus our Lord not death nor life any other thing as it says in Romans chapter 8 can separate you from the love of Christ so you're not exempt!

[33:09] exempt from hardship that's clear for us in scripture but you serve a God who is sovereign over your hardship faith makes biblical courage a possibility because it trusts in the character and work of a sovereign!

[33:27] It makes biblical courage a possibility because it trusts in the character and work of the sovereign God so a couple of questions for you in what ways or for what reasons is my heart most prone to fear in what ways or for what reasons is my heart most prone to fear I think it's helpful for you to write some of those down or to at least contemplate them because where you're fearful it reveals something that is taking place underneath the surface in your spiritual life which leads us to our next question what characteristic or attribute of God am I doubting what characteristic or attribute of God am I lacking in faith or doubting when I am fearful in this way so you think about your fear what does that tell you about your view of God if you are fearful about what's going on in the

[34:30] Middle East what does that tell you about God's sovereign rule over his nations or all of the nations in the world if you are fearful over sending your child to school for the first time what does that tell you about God's ability to protect and guide your child as you seek to parent him and grow him up in the way of the Lord or in the things of the Lord you can go through a number of things that you're fearful of and kind of identify where is it or what is it about the Lord that you are not trusting in that moment so faith makes biblical courage a possibility number four faith makes redemption a reality faith makes redemption a reality we see this in verse 28 it says by faith he kept the Passover and sprinkled the blood so that the destroyer of the first born might not touch them so true faith accepts

[35:31] God's plan of salvation instead of our own human tendency would lead us to think right that it's our works that would merit our salvation before the Lord but in the same way that Moses kept the Passover they put the blood on the door post believing that the destroyer would pass over every first born we are to place our faith and trust in Christ salvation if you place yourself in Moses shoes he was the mouthpiece to the people of Israel you have to imagine how he might have felt on the night of Passover in that moment of waiting he's putting a lot of hope and trust in God's word to him that if you put the blood over your door post that the destroyer was going to pass over your family and you have to imagine in that moment as that angel of death came sweeping through that as the cries of the Egyptian people started to ring out and echo through the streets it started to get real for

[36:32] Moses in that moment he had to wonder is this going to truly be effective was God really true and right when he said that if we just did this and put the blood up that's all we had to put our faith and trust in is it truly going to pass over our children are the Israelite people going to be going to be spared right that took a lot of faith and trust and it is a picture for us as believers to put our faith and trust in what Christ has done pleading the blood of Christ on our behalf that his righteousness was given to us our sin was taken on him this great exchange truly happened that 2000 years ago he truly rose up from the grave and so that when I close my eyes and death on this earth those last few moments I have to put a lot of trust that that's actually going to happen because I don't know what's going to happen on the other side of death other than what God has told me would happen in his word that's why it requires faith scripture says it's impossible to please

[37:38] God without faith thankfully Moses took God at his word so should we we so often think that our way makes more sense than God's we tend to think that what God has said about this area of my life must surely no longer apply today we're prone to think that surely God cares about my happiness more than my holiness yet truly holiness brings out our greatest joys we're tempted to think that God could not or would not use difficult circumstances in our lives to conform us to the image of his son requires faith in God's word to us like Moses we simply cannot be determined to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin while also believing Christ that's not the way of salvation if you're going to follow Christ Galatians 2 or 524 says that we have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires we can't have our life with one foot enjoying the fleeting pleasures of sin and the other foot trying to claim the name of

[38:45] Christ that's not how it works we pick up our cross we follow him we're new creatures the old has passed away the new has come you saw that visualized and symbolized for us in the baptistry this morning we have to come to God on his terms through faith without which redemption is not ours so faith makes redemption a reality because it forsakes our own attempts at salvation and it accepts God's free and unmerited gift so a few questions for you as we close here has there been a moment in your life where you forsook the fleeting pleasures of sin you confessed that to the Lord you repented of it and you placed your faith in the work of Christ on the cross on your behalf shorter way to write that down have you placed your faith in Christ for salvation if you have not I urge you to do that today forsake the things of the world pursue

[39:50] Christ die to self put on the things of Christ repent of your sin recognize that Christ lived that perfect life for you the one that you can never live he died the death that you deserve he was raised again to life showing he had power over sin death in the grave if you put your faith and trust in that work you will be saved if you have not done that do it today for the believers in the room are there ways that we are functionally depending on our own works to please the Lord over and above the work of Christ are you functionally depending on what you are doing and sometimes it's even those good things sometimes you're like I'm coming to church I go to!

[40:36] I God's approval we need to confess that repent of that and lastly are there ways that we may be going through the motions of placing the blood on the door post without truly believing in its power without depending on his grace so are you going through the motions without truly depending on his grace and sometimes you don't find those things out until something happens in your life when the bottom drops out you realize that you have been coasting in the

[41:38] Christian life you claim the things of Christ but never placing your faith in the things of Christ so are you daily depending on his grace Philippians 3 8 says I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord some may say no because you're not a believer and I call you to repent believe in the Lord Jesus some may say no because you're more in love with the world right now than the Lord I call you to repent forsake the world pursue Christ some may say no because you're fearful of the consequences or results I call you submit your fear your fearful heart to the Lord renew your mind with the promises of God in scripture that's why they're there he gives us these promises that he will never go back on that will fortify our hearts just like the author of

[42:46] Hebrews is trying to do with the the Hebrew people who were about to face or were facing persecution in any and all of these scenarios I want you to hear for me as one of your pastors we are here to help you as a church if you don't know Jesus we want to help you understand what that means what it looks like to pick up your cross and follow him if you are caught in sin and you're having trouble forsaking the fleeting pleasures of that sin we want to help you we want to help point you to Christ and give you as many resources as we can if you are fearful if you are anxious we want to talk through that with you and remind you of the promises of God in scripture we're here to help you we're here to support you we pray for us God we're thankful for this chapter in Hebrews that gives us a list of people throughout scripture that had great faith

[43:47] Moses being one that we can look to to see how he forsook the world to follow you so Lord where there are fleeting pleasures of sin where we have fearful hearts where we are holding on to the world I pray that we would see that we would recognize that we would confess that we place our faith and trust in you fully this morning we pray these things in Jesus name amen in the morning when I cry in the morning when I rise in the morning when I rise give me

[44:49] Jesus Jesus when I come to near him man his name or when I come to him here he would when I come to him because when I come to love him when I come to him man him off him who give me back when I come to him his coming to him his enemy Jesus When I come to die, when I come to die, oh, when I come to die, give me Jesus.

[45:43] Give me Jesus, give me Jesus.

[45:54] You can have all this world. You can have all, have all this world.

[46:13] You can have all this world, but give me Jesus. Thank you for being here, church.

[46:32] God bless you. You're dismissed. Thank you. Thank you.

[47:02]  God bless you.